The present invention relates to an atomic emission spectrometer and particularly to a unique diffraction grating, mirror and detector arrangement.
Spectrometers typically employ a diffraction grating which are concave and one or more mirrors in which incoming spectral emissions are directed toward the diffraction grating which divides the incoming emission spectra into different spectral bands then rereflected by a mirror onto a detector. The detector is a somewhat elongated array of photo detectors over the image plan which typically is not flat and, therefore, results in some field curvature reducing the image quality and, thus, the spectral coverage available. Also, such elongated detector arrays are somewhat expensive. If multiple arrays are employed to access adjoining wavelength regions, they must be physical placed in juxtaposition which results in physical interference between such detectors. Accordingly, although convex diffraction gratings have resulted in improvements in spectrometers, significant problems remain with respect to the ability to divide the incoming spectral emissions into physically distinct and detectable frequency bands.